John Twelve Hawks is not my birth name.

Although my books have been translated into 25 languages and read by millions of people, I have managed to create a life that protects my privacy. In the future I may assume a more public identity, but for now I see my actions as a statement that we don’t have to accept the unauthorized tracking and monitoring of our lives.

Every month or so I post on my verified Facebook page. That’s where you can ask questions and see photographs of the locations that inspired my fiction.

Although I’ve never met my readers, I heard from thousands of them during the last decade. They’re intelligent and aware of what is going on in the world. Thank you for reading my books. I hope to surprise, entertain and challenge you in the future.

Spark: A Novel

After a catastrophic motorcycle accident, Jacob Underwood woke up believing he was already dead. This unusual condition has a name—Cotard’s syndrome—and a surprising benefit: Feeling dead makes Jacob frighteningly good at his job. A contract employee of the multinational corporation DBG, he can now carry out his assignments with ruthless precision, untroubled by guilt, fear, dishonor or any moral conflict—the perfect skills for a hired assassin. When a bright young DBG associate vanishes without a trace, likely taking vast sums of money and valuable company information with her, Jacob will pursue her into a labyrinthine network of dark dealings which extend around the globe, and far beyond his understanding.

against authority, an ebook

In both his novels and in his 2005 essay, How We Live Now, John Twelve Hawks was one of the first authors to warn us about the growing power of surveillance technology. Now he has written a personal and controversial book that shows how our lives are watched and analyzed by governments and international corporations. In a world in which our actions can be monitored by a computerized grid of social control, is there anything we can do to defend our freedom?

In this short essay, the best-selling author John Twelve Hawks offers some practical suggestions for anyone feeling angry or overwhelmed by America’s toxic political landscape.

John Twelve Hawks explains how a short visit to hell helped him understand the talking heads that have appeared on your television screen. He describes a way to have a meaningful conversation with someone who strongly disagrees with your views and gives the one rule that must be followed by anyone seeking real change.